


slip your fears into my head

by princerai



Series: reincarnation down by okkervil river [1]
Category: Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Human AU, M/M, Mental Illness, Odin's A+ Parenting, POV Second Person, Sibling Incest, Sort Of, Witch Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 17:06:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14477304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princerai/pseuds/princerai
Summary: Lost names, lost time, lost in a bedroom, golden spires reaching toward the ceiling, and of course your father thinks you're mad, but once you've touched gold you can never rub it free from your eyes.





	slip your fears into my head

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfic that I've posted in literally years. After spending nearly a year lurking and devouring the stories posted in the thorki tag, I've finally thought to poke my nose into the fun and maybe try and make some friends. 
> 
> I've got a Thing for Thor and Loki reincarnating over and over, ever determined to find one another. Hence, this. I also have a weird Thing about human AUs where Thor and Loki retain their names, particularly when the characters are in modern day America as they are here. Plus, reincarnation, etc. 
> 
> Not much more to say than that, besides the suggestion of listening to Okkervil River, which heavily inspired this story, particularly Your Past Life as a Blast and the band's titular song.

It’s the sort of summer where you expect to be doing absolutely fuckall, freshly graduated, freshly indebted to the government for likely the rest of your life, and yet, you spend a good deal of it driving your brother back and forth to therapy.

(The night before your dad pulled all these strings to get him immediately admitted into an outpatient program because that’s all he ever seems to be doing, pulling the thousands of threads and connections he has throughout the city- you found Brendan in your bed, his spine bent at an impossible angle, his pale face gone blotchy from hot, hot tears.)

(He hadn’t been in your bed in years. You were stunned to find the sight of him there brought a pang of longing bubbling to the surface, popping against the walls of your heart. Nostalgia, almost.)

(You’d been out of the house, at the gym, chasing the existential crises from your body by tiring it out, every muscle taut and gleaming in the late day summer sun.)

(Then, your phone, sitting in the locker, still, unassuming.)

(There were three voicemails waiting. One from mom, one from dad, one from Brendan.)

(Mom teary. Asking if you’d noticed that things were off with Brendan. If you hadn’t told her because you felt you couldn’t.)

(Dad … faux-reasonable, in the way that he tends to be. That this can be fixed. This too will pass, surely, if it’s swept under the rug and crushed beneath his boots.)

(Brendan--)

(“There’s nothing wrong with me! Don’t let them fool you!”)

(If it weren’t Brendan, that would send about a thousand signals flying high through your head, ‘don’t trust him’.)

(But it’s Brendan.)

(When you found him in your bed, you locked yourself in, shoved your gym bag and the dozen or so dirty t-shirts strewn about your floor against the crack between the door and the carpet, and it was just the two of you for a half hour.)

(Just his wet breaths against your dark shirt, tears and sweat vanishing into the black threads, and his furious fists beating against your chest.)

“What’s this guy even been telling you? Like, is he actually any use to you?”

It is a guy. Old and crusty. The kind you completely expect to be faced with when sat in a therapist’s office. You rolled your eyes the first time you saw him, hidden behind your dad’s back, only seen by Brendan- and Brendan bit his cheek, knew he was being watched, knew he couldn’t smirk.

He sits in the passenger seat, carving his hand through the blustering air outside the window. You’re driving over the speed limit but in this suburban nightmare’s dusky twilight, it seems like people go to bed before the sun truly sets. The roads belong to you and the frantic pulse of your car speakers- and to him, when he sits at your side, snapping photos of the emerald branches above.

“What do you think he’s telling me? He says I’m delusional. What else. He wants to get me on pills. I almost want him to just so I can have something to sell off. Maybe I can get the new DS.”

You pinch his knee in a show of ‘I am your big brother and I’m supposed to pretend that’s a bad thing so here’s your punishment’, and he lets out an exaggerated yowl before playing dead in his seat, tongue lolling out for effect.

His black nail polish catches the sunlight, like a flash of fire streaming white hot over his fingertips.

(You never questioned the candles, the curtains, the flames, the strange smells, the books. It was a hobby- and it made Brendan happy, and so that was all that mattered after watching him grow up hanging his head and sticking to his own space.)

(You yelled at your dad for taking that away from him, that same night that you came home and found Brendan in your bed. It wasn’t the first time you’d raised your voice to him, and it wouldn’t be the last, and you asked him, again and again, what the hell he thought he was doing, hasn’t he seen how well Brendan has been doing, how could you do this to him?)

(And what infuriated you most was the way he just looked at you, like you’re still a child.)

(You hate looking at him and seeing your eyes. Eye. His eye. Your eye.)

(People ask sometimes, how did it turn out that you both lost the same eye, is it hereditary, and, yes, but fuck off, don’t be so nosy- but really, what pissed you off was that you undeniably belonged to him, and everybody could see that.)

(They never stop to see the ways you belong to yourself.)

(the ways you belong to one boy only)

(the ways you can slip into one another’s minds, almost see what the other sees through a wavy double vision, the ways you just know what to get him when he’s shaking too tired to eat too tired to think, the ways he eases the pain from your body pushed to its limits with a touch and knows your body far too well for a brother, the ways you both fall into step when walking together in forests chasing strange creatures you think you saw but surely it was an illusion but you both saw it, didn’t you-)

(nobody sees that. just the missing eye.)

“You don’t think I should be seeing him.”

It’s a matter-of-fact statement, and, of course you don’t. 

“I know what you’re seeing is real. The witch shit is … I don’t know, you never told me if it was related or if that’s just you being an insufferable goth.” 

It’s your turn to be pinched. 

You wonder how long you can drive in circles before you have to actually start the trek to the therapist’s office. 

“If it’s not real then I guess I need to be going too, but-”

“You don’t want to give this up, do you?”

You’re the adult. You know you’re supposed to say yes.

(visions of gold, of buildings stretching to the sky, a throne, a labyrinth library, and he hides between the shelves, waiting for your hands, your mouth, your strength)

(laying back in bed, holding his wrist, feeling the rush of his pulse, knowing he sees what you see, hearing his breath catch as your lips capture the brother of your visions)

(you feel so, so strong)

(he sparkles with an energy you cannot name)

You take too long to answer, and that is answer enough.

His evil little mouth is carved into a smirk and you know you’re fucked.

“What is it?”

“Take me down to the park. I need to show you something.”

Dad won’t let you hear the end of this. But he doesn’t have to know, til he does. And you’ll take the blame. 

You can’t refuse Brendan. Your curiosity will be the death of you, one day.

Your busted up truck screeches her protest at being egged on, but you don’t give her an inch of mercy, leaning on the gas til all above you is a sea of green.

(He’ll follow you here, holding your hand, trembling, seeing a thousand different hunts, a thousand different nights spent beneath the stars at the side of a fire dying upon ashen logs, a thousand moments that were for you and him and the both of you alone.)

(You see the ghosts of a thousand beasts prancing through the brush, and he calls you to chase, see where and how it ended.)

(When did you both decide this all had happened in the past, when you two are hardly a blip on the radar of time, when you’re both young and only had this world to know?)

(How is it you’ve always felt a thousand years old and that this body is too frail for what is contained within you?)

Bloody red sunset lights the way. Brendan takes care to step into every puddle of red, staining his bare feet for a brief second, and then, he is clean again. You aren’t as precise, choosing to dip in and out of light without a care.

You hear the whispering of a river and you know it’s your river.

He often begged to be brought here, just to gather the fallen branches, and they would later burn on his once-altar, now forever stripped from his bedroom.

Now, sitting beneath a filthy rain-slick tarp, a hole- just deep enough to hide lighters and razors and strong branches, for burning and for writing, and you see the runes that linger even after a dozen rainstorms, dragged into the muddy shore by a precise little hand.

He foregoes his jeans, tossing them onto the riverside, and you do the same, without question. Those sun-blood stained feet descend into the flowing waters, til it catches along the skirting edges of his sheer black top. Hands outstretched, he beckons you forth.

You fall to his arms, and wonder how many times this, too, was your life, running to him when he reaches, knowing he does not always reach first and that it is special for him to reach at all.

Where you both stand, holding onto one another’s hands, you see where the river flows out to, a desperate rush toward the setting sun. The trees stand out of its path, knowing it will stop for no one and nothing, not until it may touch the possessive earth’s sole star.

The sun lingers, bleeding out into the river, casting white lines red, flowing over you both, and he takes his fingertips, dragging them down your chest through your clothing. 

You think you recognize the runes. You recognize the name he calls you in the shared dreams.

He stands on his toes, wraps his arms safely around your neck, and you taste something bright, something golden, like fresh apples off a holy branch, and the black of your eyelids bursts into green, green raw power flowing into lightning.

You hear thunder and you distantly know you should leave the waters, though you did not see a single cloud in the sky. 

But his kiss is an anchor. You can’t move.

What was his rune name? 

Across his chest, over his heart, a hand slinking between your bodies-

He shakes, and weeps against you, knows what he is, and you know too, you both know what you’ve known all along but you feel it in the marrow of your shared bones.

Shared, because this time, you were born of the same body, and you almost wonder if he pulled strings— (much like the man you both call father in this life) to make sure that you shared blood.

You’re brothers no matter what. No matter the blood between you two.

But his possessive kiss says it all, that if he could have your blood without even having to draw it with his own hands, then he’s pleased.

You can’t stop kissing him, even as your chest rumbles in time with the heavens, and the rain washes the blood from the river.

**Author's Note:**

> Here's to many more stories, I hope!
> 
> Sidenote; I've got to say that there are two writers who really inspired me to come back to fandom, specifically lokidreamsinbw and maharlika. Their works are excellent and I highly recommend you check them both out if you haven't yet.


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